Dropping Glasses (just to hear them break)
by dottsie
Summary: After eight years in hiding, Syndrome's life is entirely in Violet's hands. Violet's had a lot of time to think about Nomanisan.
1. Chapter 1

Note: Gigi is Lucius's niece! She was in The Adventures of Violet and Dash.

* * *

Violet's fingers twitched and curled like claws. It felt like her eyes were glowing, burning, but she knew they weren't; her powers didn't work like that.

Twenty years. This moment was twenty years in the making. Probably more. Probably a lot more.

It was a lot to process in such a short amount of time.

The facts:

Syndrome was alive. Somehow. He survived his injuries from the jet turbine, he made himself some new robot limbs, _something._

Syndrome came back. He waited, waited eight years after Nomanisan, after committing genocide, and he came back.

Syndrome was fighting Violet's family again. He found them in Municiberg, while they were taking care of a petty burglar on a family outing. Somehow.

Syndrome's bionic parts had ceased to function, thanks to some electromagnetic interference by Gigi a few minutes prior. It was surprising, how clear of a shot he had given her. How careless he'd been.

Syndrome was now hanging in the air, suspended only by a shimmering purple forcefield. He and Violet were at the top of a skyscraper, and falling from this height without one of his remote controls to save him would be fatal.

And now, after everything, after suddenly showing up and being neutralized within thirty minutes, he was entirely at Violet's mercy.

He squirmed and writhed inside the forcefield, his feet kicking against the bubble as if he thought it would have an affect. It was grating at worst, and morbidly funny at best.

Violet's head throbbed every time Syndrome's boot hit the surface of his makeshift prison, but she ignored it. She had shielded against much worse than some thick-skulled manchild who spent too much money on footwear. She could handle this.

She cracked her neck and shouted over the hum of the city. "That's not gonna work any better than the bullets your thugs fired at me when I was fourteen."

Syndrome glared, his mouth curled back in a grimace. "Who are you, again?"

Violet clenched her hands, ever so slightly, tightening the forcefield Syndrome was in, making it smaller. He startled, his hands flying up to the walls around him, but his expression quickly turned back to one of aloofness.

She didn't look around as she heard the tell-tale _whoosh_ that signaled Dash had arrived. It wasn't as if Syndrome was going anywhere, but fire was coursing through her veins. She couldn't think about anything but the massive distance between Syndrome and the pavement below. It was impossible not to.

Violet snarled. "Give me one reason I shouldn't drop you."

Syndrome scoffed. "You wouldn't. You're too good to kill me."

His underestimation did it.

She purposefully let go of her grip on the bubble, just for a moment, letting him fall a foot or two before catching him again. He yelped, his arms scrambling for purchase after she had caught him again, not having time to think.

"Give me a reason!" Violet barely registered her brother saying her name behind her. Her ears were ringing.

She continued. She didn't know why, but all of the words in her head were spilling out of her mouth. "You hid for years with your tail between your legs, waiting for my parents to get older and weaker, letting us believe that we would never have to deal with you again. Before _that_ , you killed dozens of supers. You targeted them, you exploited them, and for what?" Violet shrugged Dash's hand off of her shoulder. "For revenge? Cause that went _swimmingly_."

Syndrome banged against the forcefield with his fists, his eyes as big as plates. "Don't kill me! I know you're a good kid."

"That's where you're wrong. I'm not a kid anymore. While you were hiding, I grew up. I'm not fourteen anymore." Another twitch of her hands, and the bubble was even smaller. "I've had time to process the trauma that forged me. Did I mention I was _fourteen_ when you sent armed soldiers after me and my brother?"

"Please-"

Violet dropped Syndrome and caught him again. Her next words were spat like venom. "He was _ten_!"

Syndrome had stopped kicking now, and was instead hyperventilating.

"Did I mention those minor details? By the way, did I mention how you committed genocide against people like me? Against supers? I think I did," the bubble shrunk again, "but I can't be sure. And to think, you only did that as a means to an end! To make your stupid robot stronger to fight my father! All that, and for what?"

Violet's chest rose and fall with each deep breath, her throat dry, her arms feeling like they might explode from electricity inside them. Before tonight, she knew she hated Syndrome, but it almost surprised her how little remorse she felt seeing him like this.

He was blubbering now, something or other about her letting him go, which she found ironic since he was suspended hundreds of feet in the air. His face was red, his nose was running, and his hair was disheveled. He looked like a mouse with its tail caught in a trap.

And then, Mr. Incredible's voice cut through the night air. "That's enough!"

Violet took a moment to finally glance behind her and saw her father emerging from the door to the rooftop. He and Elastigirl had been left on the ground after Syndrome had flown himself to the top of the building, with Violet and Gigi following close behind and being the first to the roof. Violet's family was finally catching up to the action.

Bob was breathing heavily, and his age was showing after scaling several flights of stairs. But, despite this, his face was shadowy and intense, his words commanding. "I don't know how, but you got him. You got him, Violet. Now, set him down over here."

She flinched upon hearing her father use her civilian name, but the reflexive anxiety was quickly replaced by more anger. Syndrome already knew her name. Of course he did. What was the point?

Violet didn't move. She made eye contact with Dash, whose expression was unreadable, but who had made no move to stop her.

Bob's hands were held up as he slowly approached his daughter. "Violet, that's _enough,_ " he repeated.

Her gaze turned back to Syndrome, whose breaths were still quick and fast, whose entire being was trembling.

On the ground below, a woman's scream sounded off, but it could only be faintly heard from the roof.

When she heard this, Violet's jaw clenched. She imagined Syndrome hitting the pavement, and civilians, citizens, people witnessing it. Witnessing his death.

Innocents, who had no clue what this man has done. A child, crying, knowing only that someone was dead, and that it was scary and awful.

And, with that image, Violet made her mind up.

She swung her forcefield back, like a baseball, and as Syndrome screamed, she threw him at the concrete wall on the roof, inches from the door Bob had entered from. The forcefield dissolved around him before he made impact, and she guessed he probably broke an arm, but she didn't find herself caring.

Violet shouldered her way past Bob and walked up to Syndrome's - no, he didn't deserve a "hero" name. Buddy Pine's - groaning frame.

She used her boot to turn his face towards her. "You're right, Buddy. I am a good person." She ignored his grimace when she used his real name. "I'm a good person because there's people down there that would see your death. And you know what? Unlike you, I'm not about to be an agent to someone's trauma."

Behind her, Bob forcefully reiterated that she had done enough, and this time, Violet agreed with him.

She watched as her father came up and held Buddy's hands behind his back, barking an order to Dash to send for the police.

* * *

A couple hours later, and the mood had time to fester and rot even more.

After leaving Syndrome in maximum security and arriving at home in the supercar, Bob had made a beeline out of the Incredibile, his face just as stern as it had been on the rooftop.

And so, Violet trailed her father as he walked through the Parr household's secret entrance that they used as a garage for the Incredibile (this wasn't the same secret entrance her mother had used during the whole Screenslaver debacle; this was a whole new house Winston had commissioned for them). She left her mother and brother behind, letting them come in on their own.

All of them had all been too quiet on the drive home, and she still had things on her mind. And it was making her angry that her dad wasn't acknowledging it first.

"Avoiding the elephant in the room again, Dad?" Violet took long strides, trying to keep up with her father's pace. She knew she sounded accusatory, and felt a twinge of guilt for a split second, but she didn't retract.

Bob's gaze was fixed straight ahead of him, but his fist could be seen clenching slightly. "We'll have this discussion in the morning."

Violet took off her mask and threw it onto a table in the entry hallway. "No, I want to do it now. Why are we always putting this shit off? Why's it always tomorrow, or the next day?"

"Honey, I'm not talking about this with you right now."

"Mr. Incredible backing out of a tough subject again. Shocking."

His eyes shut. "Violet, that's-"

"Enough? That's enough?" She felt like she was poking an angry animal with a stick, but she wasn't thinking.

Bob stopped in his tracks and turned to his daughter, his expression reminding her of when Jack-Jack's powers first started showing themselves. He gritted his teeth. "Violet..."

Violet threw her hands in the air, her filter entirely gone. "I almost killed Syndrome, Dad! I was gonna kill him until you came along! It's out in the open now! No sugarcoating it."

"Yes, you were going to kill him!" Bob pointed a finger at her. "And it was irresponsible, and you should know that by now!" He continued walking.

"Irresponsible?" She ran a few paces ahead and turned backwards to face him. "Are you kidding me? He tried killing us, Dad! He was gonna do it again!"

"That may be true, but do you know the legal shit we'd have to deal with?"

"We've done it before, and we could do it again."

Bob stopped again, blocked by her. "It doesn't matter! We don't kill! Supers don't kill!"

A surge of frustration ran through Violet. "Since when?! That's stupid!"

"It sinks us to their level, Violet!"

"Even when that person was going to kill more people?" She took a few steps towards her father, looking directly up at his face and making direct eye contact. Her fists were clenched just as much as his were. "So it makes me as bad as a murderer if I take a murderer's life to save people in the future?"

"There's other ways to detain murderers!" His voice had crescendoed, and was now ringing through the hallway. "There's other ways of dealing with these things!"

Violet scoffed. "What, like prison? So they can have time to escape, or get out, and do the same damn thing all over again?"

"The-"

"It wasn't just murder, Dad! He attacked children! _Your_ children! He committed genocide!" She felt her face growing hot from anger, and she didn't care. "Those supers were your friends! Don't you care about that? Don't they deserve more?"

Bob's face took a sudden turn. His features darkened. His eyes clouded over with raw emotion; some kind of fury, grief, or a mix of both. "Do _not_ bring those supers up." His voice had lowered. "Do you hear me? You do _not_ bring them up."

Violet's heart felt like it was tearing in two, being cut apart by a knife made of molten metal. "Why not? They died because of Syndrome. They deserve vengeance."

"You didn't know them, and you're never going to know what their thoughts on vengeance would be. You don't get to put words in their mouths."

"Yeah, and I'm never going to get a chance to know them now, and it's because of who got arrested tonight!"

"Killing him isn't going to fix what he did!"

"I'm not five years old!" Hot tears ran down her face. "I know it won't fix it! But it means he won't be able to take anyone else away from us, away from their families!"

Bob ran his hands through his hair. "And _that's_ why he's in jail now. _That's_ why he went to maximum security, and _that's_ why he'll stay there for the rest of his life."

"You don't know that. You don't know what he can do. What if he escapes? What then?"

"Then we catch him again." He paused and looked at Violet with desperate eyes. "And that's why we don't kill. That's why we _never_ kill."

"God, I-"

Violet took a few heavy, deep breaths, sputtering a few more syllables and staring at Bob for a few seconds.

She stepped around him (avoiding a passive-aggressive shouldering this time) and walked back towards the door. She didn't look back as she pulled an overcoat from the rack and put it on over her supersuit.

Helen and Dash were right behind the door, slumped against the wall and waiting for the argument to be over. Helen's head perked up, asking "Sweetie?" in her implacable drawl as Violet stormed past.

The last thing Violet heard her family say before she left through the secret entrance was Bob responding to Helen. Just three words: "Let her go."

* * *

As soon as Violet stepped out of the door, her tears stopped falling. Her anger subsided. The fire that had boiled her insides reduced itself to a simmer.

She headed for the bus stop, the autumn air cooling her face like a balm. It was a unique sensation; her cheeks were still warm and tear-stained from the argument, but the contrast in temperature was refreshing. It both numbed her and woke her up.

She caught the last bus right as it as about to leave, tapping the glass door to catch the driver's attention.

Her fingers brushed his glove as she dropped change in the man's hand, and it made her aware of how badly she wanted a hug. Or to hold hands with someone. Something, anything.

Violet immediately detached herself from that feeling and took the seat farthest from the front.

She couldn't go to Tony's. It was almost Thanksgiving, and the Rydingers were in the process of food preparation. They always went all-out. She'd go to their house for dinner once the holiday came in a few days, but she couldn't go to him now. Not when he was on vacation, spending time with his mothers.

She couldn't go to Gigi's, either. Gigi had been on the scene with Violet, and she was the reason Syndrome had been stopped at all (the girl was a genius. having a device that messed up electronic things was incredibly handy). But Violet didn't want Gigi to see her like this. She didn't really want anyone seeing her like this.

Truthfully, Violet admitted to herself, she couldn't go somewhere where people would ask questions. She didn't _want_ people to ask questions. It had to be a place where she could be alone.

Violet's forehead leaned against the frosty window. The bus was heated on the inside, and she missed the cold, so she tried absorbing what was coming through the glass.

Her father's words rung in her head, and she found herself thinking too much about them. Not thinking about them hard enough.

Her nerves were completely stagnant now, but her heart was kicking the synapses, telling them to get up.

* * *

In the end, Violet hadn't decided where to get off until the bus stopped in the next city over, close to a park. The same park where Dash had snuck away as a kid to feed ducks. She didn't know why this seemed like the right choice, but it did.

Her boots crunched leaves underfoot as she walked down the path, and she thought about how she was glad she put on a jacket. It was less about the temperature and more about the fact that she hadn't changed out of her super suit, combined with the fact that she left her mask at home.

This way, she just looked kind of like a person who was trying to sell something. In tall, black boots.

She found herself gravitating towards the pond, and she heard the faint sound of ducks chattering. She knew Dash had named one of them Steve, but Steve had to be gone by now. It had been years. Did these ducks have new names? Was there a Steve The Second?

As she got close enough to the pond to see where the ducks were, she saw a familiar blond head sitting in a bench. The birds were flocked around him, like they knew him.

Violet walked towards the bench, and the person turned to look at Violet as he heard leaves crunching, his face hard to see with only a dim streetlamp. She rolled her eyes and called out. "Dash?"

She approached the bench, and saw that Dash had a bag of bread in one hand, and her mask in the other.

Violet stood in front of him, and he wordlessly offered the mask to her. She took it, putting it on, and sat next to him.

She asked, "How'd you know I was gonna be here?"

Dash tossed an entire slice of bread on the ground, watching the ducklings go after it. "I knew you weren't gonna talk to anyone about it, so Tony and Gigi's houses were no good. So I came here, since you're always telling me not to come here. It's the last place you'd be."

"Huh."

They sat in silence for a minute. Dash picked at another piece of bread, the crumbs falling onto his lap.

Violet was about to say something, just to get her mind off of her thoughts, when Dash took a deep breath.

He released the breath as Steve the Second tugged at the leg of his super suit. "Were you gonna do it?"

Violet's response didn't come immediately. She paused for a few moments, staring at the reflection of the moon on the pond, watching it ripple. Her gaze was intense, and it would have scared off anyone who didn't know her well.

She blinked slowly. "Yes. I don't know. Before Dad showed up? Yeah." She sighed. "What I do know is that Syndrome looked pathetic."

Violet didn't want to tell Dash she was feeling guilty now. She didn't know what she was guilty about. She couldn't pinpoint it. The argument? Syndrome? Everything?

Dash nodded. "Yeah, he kind of did." A slight smile pulled at the corners of his mouth, but it didn't get far; he was too grim at the moment to smile in full.

"What if I had done it, though?" Violet's breath hitched in her throat. "What if I had?" She felt stupid asking, but the conversation with Bob was still replaying itself in her head.

"Then he'd be dead." Dash shrugged a small shrug and glanced at his sister.

She looked at him, her brow creasing through her mask. "That's not what I meant. What I mean is..." She sighed. "Would you have done the same thing? I guess that's what I'm asking."

Dash pursed his lips, his eyes suddenly going distant. "Yeah. I think so."

Violet nodded slowly, her eyes turning back to the water.

"It's like preemptive self defense, right? I mean, he sent armed soldiers after us when we were kids. He's killed supers. He'd probably do it again."

"Probably. But I'm done talking about it now, I think. I feel sick just thinking about him. Let's just sit."

"Alright."

So, the two sat, listening to the ducks chitter as they fed Steve the Second's family pieces of bread.

A faint police siren sounded in the distance, too far away to determine its exact location, and Violet's eyes looked up, her attention momentarily caught by the noise. Noticing his sister's distraction, Dash linked his arm through hers.

He leaned his head on her shoulder. "They've got it. Whatever it is, they can take care of it tonight."

Violet diverted. "Haven't you got a test tomorrow?"

"Physics. Funny, huh? I probably know more about physics than anyone in there, like, how it actually works, but they're making me do math to prove it."

She snorted. "You should go study."

"Eh."

After that, they didn't talk much. The longer they sat there, the calmer she felt.

Violet mentally resolved to make up with her dad later. She'd talk to him. By tomorrow, they'd both have cooled off.

Right now, it was enough to sit in silence with someone who understood.


	2. Chapter 2

Violet and Bob didn't talk for a few days.

Helen, Dash, and Jack-Jack were wise enough not to bring up the night of the arrest to either of them until they had sorted things out. The father and daughter had gotten into a few disagreements of a similar nature before, and it was best just to let them deal with it themselves. They weren't people that handled external interventions well.

They purposefully avoided each other in the house on the rare occasion that Violet was at the Parr house. Therefore, she had elected to spend a couple days with the Rydingers, learning how to make flautas and milanesa from Silvia and Shelly respectively, and talking with Tony about the conflict in-between cooking lessons from his mothers. (She had decided it was better to tell her boyfriend than to try and hide it from him; he'd be able to read her mind, anyway)

The conversation went about as she had expected it to. He told her what she already knew deep down: she had to talk with her dad about it at some point. This wasn't something that could go unresolved.

So, when she went back home, Violet resolved to do just that.

* * *

It was the day before Thanksgiving now, and the house was quiet. It wasn't a busy holiday for the Parrs; they had no immediate family to invite over, and they didn't like the holiday itself that much, anyway. Lucius and Honey were the same way. Maybe it was just a super thing.

Violet was sorting through the polaroids she had accumulated in the past few months; dozens of pictures of architecture, plant life, and her loved ones were scattered haphazardly on her comforter.

She told herself she'd talk to her father once she was done sorting. But she didn't have a system to sort the pictures by, or anything like that; she was stalling, and she couldn't admit it to herself.

Violet picked up a photo of herself. In the picture, her brows were furrowed, and her mouth was open in mid-sentence, her hands held in front of her in protest. Her features were blurred, like she was going through a vortex of some kind.

Dash had taken this picture about a month ago. They had been messing around, wasting polaroids with goofy faces, and he had snatched the camera away from her.

As she was contemplating the image in her hand, someone knocked on her door, and she tensed. She looked up - it was her father.

Bob smiled hesitantly. "Hey, sweetie. Is it, uh... is it okay if I come in for a few minutes?"

He looked sheepish. He had made that face around her before, and Violet knew what it meant; he wanted to talk to her.

So. He beat her to the punch. She sighed quietly at her need to make it into a competition.

She nodded and Bob inched himself into the room, his massive shoulders shrinking in on themselves.

Violet set the photo down in front of her and pushed a few of the others aside so her father had a place to sit on her bed. The mattress caved slightly under the weight of his muscles.

The two sat in silence for a moment. Violet fiddled with the lens cap on her camera that was sitting nearby. Bob stared at his hands.

Bob was the one to break the silence. "I feel like I should explain myself."

Violet's gaze stayed on her camera, but her attention was towards her father. "Yeah. Me too."

He looked up at her, his eyebrows twitching downward. He took a deep breath. "You know, that I was, uh... in the war. In the 40's. Right?"

And that's when it hit Violet. Why her dad had been so defensive. Why they had argued in the first place.

As the puzzle pieces put themselves together in her mind, she rubbed her forehead and grimaced. "God. I hadn't even thought about that til just now."

It was the truth. Violet had gotten so caught up in her anger towards Syndrome that she hadn't remembered her father's past while she was arguing with him.

The entire reason that supers existed was because of World War II, and her father was one of the first supersoldiers created. Born from a test tube, starting life with the brain and body of a young adult.

It wasn't something either of her parents talked about often, but being created by the government solely for the purpose of being an instrument of war couldn't have been easy. There's no way it could have been easy. Killing people every day. Existing only to fight.

She looked up at him now, her eyes turning big as plates. "I'm sorry."

Bob held a hand up. "No, honey, it's okay. I just wanted to explain things."

He picked up a photo that was laying on Violet's comforter, the same one she had been holding, bringing it close to his face to examine it (he had forgotten his glasses in the other room).

He smiled briefly. "This is a cool picture of you."

"Yeah." She smiled back, but she was distracted from her photographs now. "Dash took it. That's why it's kinda blurry. I don't know."

Bob looked at the photo for a moment longer and sighed. As he set it back down beside him, he made eye contact with Violet. "You know I killed people in that war."

"Yes, Dad. I know." She frowned. "Mom did, too."

"Yes, your Mom did, too." He looked back down at his hands. "But not as many as me. She was a pilot, stretching into enemy planes and landing them on the ground, and I was on the front lines. A few of us supers were created with front line combat in mind, myself included."

Violet held her breath. Her parents almost never talked about their time on the battlefield. She would never push them to, either; it hurt both of them to talk about. But it was interesting, and she didn't want to miss anything he was going to tell her.

Bob nodded slowly, like he was repeating something to himself that he had repeated thousands of times. He repeated, "I killed people. A lot of people. I don't remember their faces. I just remember uniforms." He sucked in air through his teeth. "And that's shaped how I view justice today. I hope you understand that."

"I do." She reached over and put her hand on his shoulder.

Bob laid his hand over hers. "I don't think what I did during the war was necessarily wrong. The people fighting in the opposite side of that war were supporting an evil cause. And I don't think what you were _going_ to do was necessarily wrong, either."

Violet nodded. "I've thought about it a lot, and... I still think I would do it. If given a chance to do it in a responsible way, you know?" Her mouth tasted bitter from the simply reminder of Syndrome. "And that's how I view justice. I think that's how I've always viewed it."

"I know. And that's okay. You're your own super now." Bob made eye contact with her again, his eyes grim. "But, regardless, killing doesn't feel good. Not even if it's someone who doesn't deserve to live. I guess I don't want that on your conscience, Vi. You're still my little girl."

He continued, tears forming in his eyes. "But, I, uh... I want you to do what you feel is right. You're old enough to decide right from wrong. And I trust your judgement. I'm just telling you why I do hero work the way I do."

There wasn't any sound in the room for a few moments, save for the distant chatter of the television coming from the living room.

Violet smiled sadly. "You're trying to protect me."

"Yeah." He chuckled. "I guess that's it."

"I'm strong, Dad. I'll be okay."

"You _are_ strong. Just like your mother."

"And _you_. Just like you."

Violet would never admit it, but she loved hugs. They made her feel safe. Protected. Protective. It was nice, because she was usually the one doing the protecting.

Her dad was one of the best huggers she knew. Hugs from Bob Parr were the safest, securest hugs in the world.

And that's why, when Bob hugged Violet, she began tearing up.

The two of them let tears fall in silence for another few moments. She was dwarfed by his massive arms, but he held on as tightly as he could without hurting her.

She sniffed. "I'm sorry I brought up the other supers the other day. That wasn't okay."

"It's okay, sweetie. You're right. It's not fair."

They pulled apart from each other and sat in silence for a moment.

Bob reached into his shirt pocket, thumbing out a few photographs. Just by a quick glance, Violet could tell they were old prints. A decade or two old, at the very least. He must have pulled them out of some photo album before he came to talk to her.

He held the topmost one out towards her. "You know, I think you and Simon would have gotten along."

Violet took the photo, and saw that it was of a man; he was pushing his glasses up, and he had a stern kind of expression. He was the only one in the picture, and it looked like the table he was sitting at was in some kind of board room.

She held the picture delicately in her fingertips, like it would crumble to dust if she made one wrong move. "This was Gazerbeam, right?"

"Yeah." He chuckled softly. "He was just as fiery as you, when he wanted to be. He fought for the rights of supers his entire life, even after the ban."

Bob looked at the next picture fondly. "You would have liked Blazestone, too. Her name was Bridget. Had a thing with your Uncle Lucius for a little while - in another world, she may have been your aunt."

He set that photo next to him so it rested among the others on Violet's bed. It pictured a woman laughing, obviously caught off-guard by the photographer. The sound of her laugh almost rung through time; it looked so strong and confident.

Bob's stack of photographs was seemingly endless; a woman with a round, warm face named Stormicide. The same woman doing another's hair; this new woman had sharper features, and Bob called her Psycwave. A curly-haired man in a formal suit preparing for an opera; this was Phylange. A nervous-looking guy named Downburst, twiddling his thumbs. A group of supers posing with Dicker, all of them beaming. The list went on and on.

And, as Violet saw these souls brought back to life, she felt tears well up in her eyes for the second time that day.

Another evening, another week, another month, she would have felt the need to avenge their pointless deaths. She would have felt anger bubbling up in her chest at the injustice.

But here, with her father, who knew all of these people by name (Betty, Clara, Peter, Adam, Simon, countless, countless more), she just felt a mix of pain, homesickness, and the happiness that comes with familiarity.


End file.
